Friday, November 04, 2011

QR Codes and Contact information

-- This blog is being written by Microsoft Windows 7 speech recognition software, so if there are some errors I missed, please excuse me.

Today I was reading a LinkedIn article by Lynne, more a blog post actually. I dunno if it's her company or if she works there is this is an advertisement, but still it intrigued me.

http://www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=&gid=1062177&type=member&item=78767032&commentID=57065334&report%2Esuccess=8ULbKyXO6NDvmoK7o030UNOYGZKrvdhBhypZ_w8EpQrrQI-BBjkmxwkEOwBjLE28YyDIxcyEO7_TA_giuRN#commentID_57065334

Recently I was at a DLD conference where I met someone who had an iPhone 4, she insisted that we connect through WhatsApp so she could send me full contact record that would be installed directly into my phone - including all her numbers, contact information and even a picture.

This got me thinking, I was out of business cards and there were too many people in the conference so Internet was a problem and slow plus the fact that the lot of foreign dignitaries were there and not all of them had Internet. EVERYONE had some form of smartphone (iPhone 3, iPhone 4, android, windows mobile phone, and even some new Nokia phones).

There has to be some kind of method to communicate data between these phones.

vCard doesn't work for android, although it used to work for my old Nokia e71.

Then I saw Lynne’s blog post (above) and decided there must be a better way.

WhatsApp contact transferring is not the solution - but it is the doorway though which I entered the field.

So Googling my way around, I started reading about QR Codes, and found out that their are different identifiers hidden in the text part of the QRCode.

The first one I found was the MATMSG

According to NT DoCoMo Japan, these are the identifiers available:

1. MATMSG: - this will automatically a allow you to open an email, the TO, the Subject and the body as well as your signature can be embedded into QR code. I don't know why one would use this, as it is almost an invasion of privacy for nontechnical people, this would be a nice way of stealing their e-mail address all they need to do is just click enter on their phone and you have their email. But whatever I'm not the cyber police, and I really like the expression

“When you make something idiot proof - they just invent a better idiot”

2. MEBKM - this allows you to install a bookmark in one's browser, the NAME and URL are fields.

3. LAPL – don’t know if this really works, because obviously we're not using NT DoCoMo but it's supposed to start an application according to its ADF key (whatever that is).

4. MECARD - the holy grail.

Allows one to send contact information directly into your contact application. I've tested this on android with success, and I'm about to test this also on other devices soon (hopefully yours)Open-mouthed smile

Contact Grabber

So using any QR Code generator, in the text option, you can add your own contact information. The fields are:

Field Info Comment
N: your Name When a field is divided by a comma (,), the first half is treated as the last name and the second half is treated as the first name.
TEL: your phone number 1 to 24 digits
TEL-AV: your number for Video Calls 1 – 24 digits
EMAIL: your email
ADR: Address The fields divided by commas (,) denote PO box, room number, house number, city, prefecture, zip code and country, in order.
BDAY: your birthday 8 digits consist of the year (4 digits), month (2 digits) and day (2 digits), in order.
URL: your homepage
NICKNAME: Your nickname
NOTE: a note I would probably add something about you as well as the conference. This will help the receiver remember where they met you

Then I found this bad boy http://www.quickmark.com.tw/en/qrcode-datamatrix-generator/?qrmecard

Which is exactly to make a universal contact for your smartphone.

This is My contact info if you want to check and see if it works for you.

111004140850 MECARD:
N:Perlstein,Mickey;
TEL:+972-checktheQRCODE;
EMAIL:pitronot-AT-bigfoot.com;
URL:http\://mperlstein.blogspot.com;NOTE:Server/Client/Mobile Developer and Consultant. I offer unique services in all aspects of your Technical project\, from conceptualization\, through Financial and Strategic Models all the way to Product launch.;;

So create your contact data, save it on your phone’s picture gallery, and let someone scan it off your phone.

YAY for old technology.

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